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Goodbye First Amendment

Tom Knighton is the publisher for The Albany Journal, an online newspaper in Albany, Ga., and an assistant editor for United Liberty, a blog dedicated to examining public policy and current events from a libertarian perspective.

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President Barack Obama during speech Thursday, May 23, 2013, at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington.. (Credit: AP)

Once upon a time, we libertarians believed that on issues involving the First Amendment, we could look to Democrats as allies. Luckily, President Obama is doing everything in his power to disabuse of this notion.

Oh, he may claim that he had no knowledge that the IRS was targeting conservative groups for “special attention” regarding their non-profit status, but it happened under his watch. He’s responsible. If that was all that he had done, it would have been more than enough.

It’s just too bad it isn’t.

The Department of Justice’s treatment of the Associated Press, and also Fox News, smacks of totalitarianism. After all, Freedom of the Press is one of the things our Founding Fathers believed was essential to a free state. They knew that the first line of defense against tyranny was a watchful press.

I agree that they’ve fallen down quite a bit in recent years, but when they do try to do it right, they face retribution from the Department of Justice. How is that justified?

Folks, some journalists will do anything for a story. I wouldn’t put it past them to break laws to “get the story”. However, for all the flaws journalism possesses, journalists like that are very rare.

In fact, there’s absolutely no evidence of such going on at the Associated Press.

Instead, this is a case of retribution. The Obama Administration isn’t looking good, and they want to punish those who have made them look that way. In the process, they’re showing their true colors.

For all of his talk about “fairness”, Obama doesn’t care about fairness. Instead, he cares about punishing those who he feels deserves it, and giving the spoils to those who can keep him in power. That’s it. That’s all in a nutshell.

Still, his supporters are still turning a blind eye to Obama’s corruption. They ignore how the Department of Justice has really become a department that Obama uses to attack those who “leak” information that makes the administration look bad. So far, there’s been remarkably little investigation into other leaks that made Obama look “tough”. Those don’t hurt the preferred narrative, so they get a pass.

Through all of this lies a single common thread. All of this is punishment for speaking out against President Obama and his administration. Anyone with even a cursory understanding of world history recognizes this as the act of a tyrant, not a duly elected official in a free society.

Now, if you couple this with the administration’s fixation on taking away our ability to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government, and it’s little wonder that many Americans are terrified of what is happening to this once great nation. The left can call us paranoid all they want. I’d rather be paranoid and free, than be far too trusting and a slave any day.